Backup for claim vs. Cosby

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Book publisher Judith Regan told jurors in Bill Cosby’s sex-assault retrial Wednesday that model Janice Dickinson disclosed to her she’d been “drugged and raped” by the comedian — and that it was intentionally kept out of Dickinson’s memoir for legal reasons.

“I don’t remember verbatim, but I remember at one point during the preparation of the book, [Dickinson] told me she had been raped — drugged and raped — by Bill Cosby,” said Regan.

Regan, who published Dickinson’s first memoir in 2002, “No Lifeguard on Duty,” said the former supermodel was furious that the legal department of ReganBooks barred her from detailing the alleged 1982 sexual assault in Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Dickinson took the stand last week to say that Cosby had offered her a blue pill for menstrual cramps and that she then found herself dizzy, sitting on the edge of his bed, as the married father of five — smelling of cigars and espresso — forced himself on her.

“That story would be impossible to publish. It would require corroboration, and at that time, corroboration would have meant a witness,” Regan said under questioning. “In this particular incident, the legal department, not Janice Dickinson, decided it could not be accommodated.”

“I remember his breath, the taste of his kiss,” Dickinson told jurors last Thursday. “I remember, here was ‘America’s Dad’ on top of me, a happily married man on top of me with five children.”

Cosby, 80, is on trial for three counts of aggravated indecent assault.